1. Field of the Invention
The invention is related to the field of communications, and in particular, to the use of a key from a remote call processor to correlate call-handling information with a call.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Call center operations receive large volumes of calls. Examples of call center operations are airline reservation and customer service operations, mail-order operations, and telephone promotion operations. A call center operation controls the routing of incoming calls to the proper call center destination. The call center operation also provides the system or operator that answers the call with pertinent call-handling information.
For example, the telephone network may collect a account code from the caller and deliver the account code to the call center operation during call set-up. If the account code indicates a preferred customer, then the call center operation may have the call routed to a highly-skilled operator who is provided with the caller's name and current account information. In this way, a skilled operator may answer a call from a preferred customers with the customer's actual name and with current account information ready to quickly assist the preferred customer.
An existing technique for correlating call-handling information with an incoming call is described in detail below with respect to FIGS. 1–3. The existing technique requires the call center operation to use Dialed Number Information Service (DNIS) and Automatic Number Identification (ANI) to correlate calls with call-handling information. Unfortunately, to obtain the proper DNIS for a call, the call center operation must provide a route code for the call that corresponds to both the selected destination for the call and the proper DNIS for the call. Thus, the route code performs a dual role—correlation to both a route and DNIS digits. As discussed below, this dual role places a complex correlation burden on both the call center operation and the telecommunication network. Due to existing switching system configurations, this dual role also causes call blocking in certain situations.